Working from a smart, sassy script by James Toback (The Pick-Up Artist, The Big Bang), director Barry Levinson (Rain Man) has fashioned an elegant adult entertainment that is, by turns, dramatic, funny and sexy. It's also a movie with too many loose ends and undeveloped themes, but Levinson's knack for smoothing out unruly material serves him well in this case.

Matt Damon is an interesting, chatty choice to play Laboeuf.

Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer isn't entirely successful, but it's admirable nonetheless. The film is an honest and disturbing attempt to come to grips with the sort of modern horror that we must - more urgently every day - try to understand.

A wonderful movie anyone who's ever experienced dog ownership at its most glorious, and most embarrassing.

Director William Wellman's The Public Enemy (1931), which was billed at the time of its release as being "devastatingly real," was the first film to seriously examine the causes of criminal behavior and to portray the gangster as a product of his environment. [22 Aug 1999, p.60]

The movie doesn't paint a pretty picture, but it paints one that you sense is emotionally true. In the end, the Odones are heroes, not statues of heroes. You may not always like these people, but how can you help but admire them? [22 Jan 1993, p.E1]

In Eat Drink Man Woman, Lee's ingredients are wholesome enough and correctly prepared, and the finished product is attractively presented. There's also some inspiration here - enough, perhaps, for a fine meal but not quite enough for an entirely satisfying motion picture. [16 Sep 1994, p.20]

Senna himself gives it its heart. I just wish I'd gotten a better handle on who he was before the film's checkered flag falls.

Objective Burma!, which is directed strikingly by Raoul Walsh and has a documentary aura to it, is one of the finest and most realistic World War II dramas made during the war. [25 Oct 1992, p.61]

Red Rock West is not, in any sense, groundbreaking. When you come right down to it, all Red Rock West really has going for it is its enormous entertainment value. But, hey, that's plenty. [14 Oct 1994, p.31]

I Am Love is a cinematic orgy, a sensual Italian feast of food, sex, guilt and grief. An intimate, quiet and even slow movie, its subtle shadings veil turbulent emotions.

They (Refn and Gosling) have collaborated on a car picture that unnerves us with its idling quiet, and then pins our ears back when they stomp the accelerator.

That rare film in which every performer in it leaves the viewer in awe.

Directed by Zhang Yimou, Ju Dou is photographed in rich, burnished colors. The shots are elegantly composed and the acting is similarly fine. [04 May 1991, p.E3]

For those of us who will never go to the moon, watching For All Mankind may be as close as we'll come to fulfilling that ancient dream. If what the Hubble eventually sends back is nearly this splendid, it could actually be worth the wait. [17 Aug 1990, p.10]

One triumph of The Untouchables is the way its operatic style accommodates larger-than-life performances.

Reeves has Americanized a very good foreign film without defanging it.

A deadpan, darkly funny Korean murder mystery.

Artful, epic, operatic even, this thriller set in the world of ballet challenges the viewer with its intelligence and depth and wit.

The film doesn't go deeply enough into Hawking's theories to really explain them, and it doesn't go deeply enough into Hawking's life to impart anything but a sketchy understanding of the man. Still, considering the almost impenetrable subject matter, it's remarkable that Morris has gotten as far as he has.

Looking around, you realize that only so much is possible in this town. Fortunately, the limited range of possibilities includes a film like Gas, Food, Lodging. [8 Jan 1993]

The one really solid performance is turned in by Anjelica Huston as the Grand High Witch. [15 Feb 1991, p.16]

The movie may have been so structured to offer whites in the audience a central white figure with whom to identify. But it's the ultimate irony that moviemakers who want to call attention to the historical accomplishments of blacks feel that they can only do so if the hero of their film is white. [12 Jan 1990, p.6]

It’s a darned entertaining way to get a handle on a sport that can seem like a bunch of cars doing circles for a crowd that seems most interested in seeing that next epic wreck.

Brando's confusion is understandable. The Freshman is, as he said, a bit of a stinker. But it also contains those moments of high comedy he spoke of. Add Brando's statements together, divide the total by two and you have the right answer about this movie.

This modern-day vampire movie is, to be sure, no masterpiece, but its suggestive narrative and dreamlike visual style are distinct improvements over those of such recent living-dead flicks as The Lost Boys and Vamp. And if Near Dark doesn't provide a complete answer to the ''necking'' question it raises, well, heck, it's an exploitation film, not an advice column.

What really holds the movie together is Rachel Ward's exceptionally moving portrayal of Fay. [07 Sep 1990, p.7]

The Guard soars along on a script, like those by the other McDonagh (Martin wrote and directed "In Bruges" and the Oscar winning short "Six Shooter," both starring Gleeson) built out of verbal flourishes and Irish curses.